


Another One of Those Unnamed Students

by orange_8_hands



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Compliant, Family, Friendship, Gen, Lies We Tell Ourselves, One Shot, POV Female Character, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:40:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all the members of the pure blood families who disagree end up in a different house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another One of Those Unnamed Students

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my LJ](http://orange-8-hands.livejournal.com/1349.html), Oct 2011.

She doesn't like Harry Potter.

It's not even really him, though. He mutters wonderfully sarcastic things under his tongue, and meet Snape's eyes every time, and is absolutely brilliant as Seeker, and there's the whole defeating You-Know-Who every year, not to mention she's pretty sure he's a Good Person, deserving of the capital letters, and he's definitely hot, so it's really not him himself. She's not sure they'd necessarily be friends if everything wasn't how it was, but they could definitely be friendly, like he was with Luna, or Hannah. Someone from a different house you chat with but didn't hang out with.  

So yes, they could be friends, or friendly, if it wasn't so much dislike as absolute hatred.

The thing is, her family calls him the Dark Lord, and so do all her friends. Her whole house, really, and she wishes, she really wishes she had been chosen for another one, which could make her disloyal but really means she belongs right here, because that's self-preservation, and only Slytherins seemed to have gotten that message. She can't wish she doesn't have her own opinions, or a conscious, but it would have been a lot easier having both if she had people willing to stand next to her when she gave up everything to share them.

She looks over at Pansy, who is laughing every time Draco repeats some bloody story about Harry Potter's Potion's mistake from that afternoon, and how of course he needed Remedial Potion lessons. She didn't think it was particularly funny when it happened, and by the seventh replay she was sure of it, but Pansy has taken all the lessons her mother distilled on her about _marrying into the right family_ and _blood purity matters most_ and _I meet your father in school_ (the five lunches she'd been dragged to over the years by virtue of being Pansy's house mate were the same several phrases her mother knew too) and decided to heap them onto Draco until he proposed. Or something. Mostly she wanted to take Pansy by the shoulders and tell her to shut up, but sometimes she wanted to sit her down and explain to her _she was fifteen years old_ , not to mention smart enough to do more than marry Draco. (Or anybody, really, but especially Draco.) 

She ends up following them down to dinner after the eighth re-telling. She could lie to herself and say she was going to dinner anyways, it just happened to be the same time, but even if all the lessons of Slytherin had failed, her mother's definitely hadn't. _You lie to yourself, about yourself, and you're just handing weapons to your enemies._ She was going to dinner with them because it was considered a weakness to be by yourself, and it was bad enough being in her club of one, she didn't need her house knowing she was a blood traitor and disgrace and mudblood lover while she was still in school. Stupidity (or bravery, as the rest of the world called it) was a Gryffindor trait, and just because she didn't want all Muggles cracked open didn't mean she was one of them.

They walked by the Gryffindor table, mostly so Draco could say something or other about Potter and Remedial Potions where he could hear him, and she spotted badges with the words S.P.E.W. on them.

"They stand for the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare," Granger says, because apparently she can't _not_ answer questions, even silent ones that are more slight eyebrow twitches than actual questions. "It's to champion House-elf rights," she adds. Then she sniffs. "Not that you'd care." 

She would like to say, "What you think you know about me and my concerns and what you actually know aren't even in the same realm." She would like to say, "You can't free someone from slavery, not with something as small as badges, when the slaves don't even think they are slaves." She would like to say, "Actually, if you want to find the point when I started to turn away from everything I was taught to believe, it was because of a House-elf." She would like to say, "Do us all a favor and stop being a blathering git."

In the end, she doesn't say anything, because Pansy shrieks "SPEW? You definitely make me want to spew," and Draco finishes whatever he was saying, and they all go sit down to dinner, and she may have her convictions but she doesn't yet have the strength to stand for them. 

The war was coming. Or maybe it already started. Maybe being silent about this - and she remembers her great-aunt, shawl shaking, as she said in her thick Bulgarian accent, _we did nothing and he just murdered them_ \- was just another way for You-Know-Who to rise to power. Maybe this war wouldn't be fought just on battlefields, with the victory going to whoever had the wizards with the fastest wands. (She remembered staring at Umbridge in shock, because of course they would need defensive spells - which meant learning the offensive spells they beat - of course they would need to be able to do this, school wasn't forever, they may not even have a chance to finish school, they were on the edge of war and it really didn't matter which side blinked first, there was going to be war.)

She was allowed to hate Harry Potter, in a way that was completely different from everybody else at the dinner table. He was going to be the symbol for their side, him and Dumbledore. The rallying cry, the Boy Who Lived. He stood up against all evil sources already, he'd already defeated You-Know-Who (more than once!), and of course he was going to be in the thick of things, he always was.

But he was going to do it with friends by his side, and she was going to raise her wand against everybody she ever loved and most of the people she ever met. So she was allowed to be silent about her real beliefs, while it was still school and not war, because she didn't need a target painted on her back any sooner than possible.

In her dreams, the first face she fights on the battlefield is her mother's.


End file.
